Description:

Stroud Robert

Robert Stroud, "Birdman of Alcatraz" ALS on "sex in prisons" Book

 

2pp ALS on blue-lined cream paper inscribed overall and 2x signed in black pen by "Birdman of Alcatraz" Robert F. Stroud (1890-1963), the first as "Robert Stroud, P.M.B. 594" at top of first page, and the second as "Bob, Robert Stroud, 594" at the bottom of the second page. Docketed in pencil in upper right corner. Written from Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary on July 10, 1950.  In near fine condition, with expected paper folds. Each page measures 8" x 10.25."

 

Federal prisoner Robert Stroud, #594 penned this letter from his Alcatraz prison cell in the summer of 1950. The self-educated ornithologist and published author wrote regularly to Fred E. Daw of Coral Gables, Florida, who was a fellow bird enthusiast.

 

The letter discusses extensively Robert Stroud's manuscript of what would become Looking Outward: A History of the U.S. Prison System from Colonial Times to the Formation of the Bureau Prisons. In it, Stroud sharply criticized the American prison system, highlighting its systematic mistreatment of prisoners and corruption among guards. He also treated the incendiary topic of homosexuality in all-male prisons. His lengthy manuscript was written in similar elegant and uniform script on prison commissary issued legal notepads.

 

All excerpts from Stroud's letter include his original spelling. In paragraph 3 of this ALS, Stroud wrote: "The new book [Looking Outward is going on slowly, I have been over a week on the concluding chapter of Part IV. All the person who have read it have told me that it contains the best writing in the whole book. The subject is sex in prisons, and you cannot put that subject over with bad writing. It demands the best. Being a subject that I know thoroughly, the problem in most of the chapter has been to keep the material in hand and keep the chapters from being too large…One man, after just reading an excerpt said: 'If you ever publish this you will certainly cause a furor.'"

 

Stroud's prison history also delved into the question of how morbid religiosity led prisoners to deviance in the first place. "If Frank and Carter ever read this new book they will be off me for life, Fred. Some of the things I say about voodooism and Bible backs are not nice, Fred. I think that the phony ideas they teach are one of the principle source of the maladjustments that lands boys is prison and make prison doubly difficult for them. I have had a chance to see the harm done and the suffering caused, and I'd have handled this matter without gloves…I said…'If there is one good thing that may be said of Marxism, it is that is has attacked and undermined with some success our widely accepted religious voodooisms.'"

 

Stroud was already a veteran published author in 1950. His 1933 Diseases of Canaries and the 1943 second edition reprint called Stroud's Digest on the Diseases of Birds examined the causes, symptoms, and treatment of common bird diseases. In this letter to Daw, he recommends what to feed baby birds, and how not to disrupt their hatching process. Stroud's interest in birds began as an inmate of Leavenworth Prison in Kansas.

 

Stroud worked on his prison history between his transfer to Alcatraz in 1942 until the early 1960s. The U.S. Bureau of Prisons forbade the manuscript's publication, along with Stroud's autobiography Bobbie, so Stroud sued the agency in 1962 claiming that the mandate violated his freedom of speech rights. After his 1963 death, Stroud's manuscripts went into probate and were only released to his Springfield, Missouri lawyer Dudley Martin in the 1980s. Thirty years later, in 2014, Part I of Looking Outward: A Voice from the Grave: The Federal Prison System from the Inside appeared in e-book form.

 

Stroud thus had the last word. As he wrote rather menacingly about himself and a friend at the conclusion of this ALS, "we have always had a lot of drive, Fred, and no one has to look at us twice to know that we are persons who have to be reckoned with."


Robert Stroud spent 54 years in prison, 42 of which were in solitary confinement. After his initial 1909 arrest for manslaughter, Stroud compounded his sentence by assaulting fellow inmates and staff, as well as by killing a prison guard in 1916. At Alcatraz, prohibiting from caring for birds, he devoted his energies to learning French, studying the law, and writing.

 

A remarkable ALS from the "Birdman of Alcatraz" discussing his damning history of U.S. prisons!

 

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